GRAND CHUTE – Members of the Pittsville baseball team had a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call Wednesday morning in preparation of playing a WIAA Division 4 state semifinal baseball game just over two hours later.

The Panthers didn’t end up taking the field at Fox Cities Stadium until 1:15 p.m. at the end of a five-hour rain delay, and ultimately lost to Lake Country Lutheran 13-2 in six innings.

The WIAA initially postponed Pittsville’s game, which was scheduled to start at 8 a.m., and then re-evaluated the weather and field conditions an hour later. It was then determined that the game — the first of six scheduled games for Day 2 of the tournament — would be pushed back to 1 p.m.

“Normally, it would be tough to get back (mentally) because you’re all ready (to go) and it’s tough to get back in that mood,” Pittsville sophomore pitcher Paul Downs said. “But my team, we were pumped for this game the whole day through. It didn’t matter to us, we just wanted to play.”

Pittsville coach Bill Urban said the team took advantage of the delay to take some batting practice around 10:30 a.m. at Appleton East.

“(The waiting) is difficult, especially for the kids. They have all this energy going on and they’ve got to get rid of it somehow,” Urban said. “You just try and keep them busy.”

Since Thursday, Pittsville had been holding early-morning practices to get the players accustomed to the start time of the semifinal game. The team started at 8 a.m. the first day, and was hitting the field an hour earlier in the final practices leading up to state.

“We trained all week for that to get up early, and all of us would go home and take naps around noon,” junior outfielder/pitcher Nathan Dupee said. “We all set our alarms to wake up at 5:45 this morning and we end up having the five-hour delay. But there’s nothing you can do about it.”

No Panther player was looking to the delay as an excuse to losing to Lake Country Lutheran, however.

“That had nothing to do with the outcome,” Urban said.

It wasn’t the rain — it was the Lightning that the Panthers couldn’t overcome.

“The first time through (the Lightning’s) lineup we were trying to mix up the speeds (of the pitches) a lot. I was concerned because I thought we were making some pretty good pitches and they were hitting the ball really hard. Even their outs were hard,” Urban said. “Then they threw the lefty against us — Sabol, who is an outstanding pitcher. They had a pretty good winning combination today.”

Tim Johnson can be reached at 715-845-0731. Find him on Twitter @timmyjo11.